Hop Kiln Road 2014

Riding Forever Beneath The Streets of Boston

Already another Valentines Day! M made a couple of pretty stiff ole mother flipper floppers and we were already spinning those Kingston boys and singing along watching it snow, already dry and toasty in our slippers. M uses blackberry ice cubes, puts a couple wheel barrows of blackberries through my tomato machinery and freezes 'em in ice cube trays. Sheer genius. Well we'd already decided on another round and as she leaves the room she says, "Treat, I've already picked up an Italian bread maker as my Valentine so you don't have to get me anything." Good lord...Adrenaline spike! I mean making bread is already hard work, getting up early and all, and we already have a spare bedroom, but just why would I want a bread maker dude around the house? Whoa Valentine! So I'm already out of my chair when she starts hollaring from the kitchen, "Treat! Treat! Treat! The grey goose is gone!!" So I quickly figure that local fox is already on the town-o and hustle to the mudroom, where my carhartts and boots and snowshoes are already already and high hoof it down to the barn. Well everything there seems okay and I try for a beak and bill count but there's already so much bobbing and weaving I just get dizzy and head back figuring my next flipper flopper ought to be already already. Nope, why I get back and M was already waiting for me at the door with my headlamp and she says, "Treat, you already forgot your drill." Hell with the bread maker dude and my ole grey goose will just have to fend for himself, boys, it's time to tap and I'm already.

The Grey Goose is gone!!!! What are M and the italian bread maker going to drink now?

Hmmmm, Blackberry ice cubes and Grey Goose, I may have to try that.

Okay, pretty palpitating tapping even after I got the Valentine issue straightened out. The bread maker ain't a dude but just another machine that sits on the kitchen counter. M says I'm getting too old to handle multiple flipper floppers. Told her I was just all jumpy from reading the Maple Trader way too early in the year. I mean jeepers, outta nowhere guys are all firing up RO's, Plainfield has a maple cotton candy complex, Red Roof has gone Cupertino, SweetSap has a frigging BUBBLER and I don't even dare look to see what new haul vehicles the Andover proletariat has acquired or figure out what equipment Amber Gold hasn't updated - I'm thinking maybe his drill, nope he's got Alden on that - while all I got is 140 new gravity taps and I busted butt just to highwire them over the Tucker trail. M says it all sounds more like anxiety from the shingles medicine but who knows?

Love reading these threads!!!

Hilarious. Keep it coming.

Well I got two orchards dialed in, barely, and on snowshoes. Digging/chiseling in the cage tanks. Digging/chiseling out the drops. Trees are only weeping. Man looks like everything else could get really frozen in next week. Fortunately I had checked out things on the hard snow back in January. And had already rerouted the Twist Hill 1 mainline, after its poor 2013 performance, and fertilized. But the cluster tapping was severe; the guy nailed the tees and must have been using 12" drops for 15 years. Almost looks like a lightning strikes up one side of the trees. Only solution is increase the growth rates. Also had installed Twist Hill 2 mainline, including jumping the 20,000 tap Tucker track at 11.5 feet; had to drag in a ladder. Most of the guys in Bow have traded up their sleds for gentlemen SnoCats, guess they're warmer and more comfortable. A couple have Bombardiers. All with sweet paint jobs, decals and fly burgee flags on whips. One guy claims to be rebuilding a Zil-29061 but nobody has seen it, yet.

Geez Doc RB showed up this wet afternoon full of news and in no condition to finish the tap out. Says I'm way too early and will only imperil my health. Been out in Colorado checking on the humongous drop in his chronic chairlift thigh mail order business and driven back straight through and too twitchy to tweak a drill. Said around Cleveland he came up with a plan to snatch his business back from the competition and swung by to run it past me. Maple infused hashish made in Marrakesh, Vermont. Whoa...first, I told him, there wasn't a Marrakesh in Vermont. Wrong, he had already iphoned in his app and gotten a ZIPCODE for Marrakesh, Vermont. Oh five four twenty, he said. The postal people will do anything to preserve their pensions. I got on my dial up for a couple of minutes. 05420 puts it somewhere outside of Burlington, right in the maple friendly lime rock basin. Okay, second I countered, Vermont hasn't legalized pot. Go ahead, hold your breath he says. See I'm going to play the huge contradiction card: socialists driving Beamers on bad roads trunking bulk syrup over to New Hampshire in stainless steel just to get the extra nickel when they can simply USPS it up to 05420. Look, the classical psychiatrists used to shrink their patients' personalities back to a manageable size and hallelujah, the patients found happiness. Today, with all the talking head jaw flapping facebook posting, it's quicker and cheaper to medicate happiness...both trains stop at the Euphoric Street Station. Doc says the Vermont, Inc. folks in M-town are already salivating viral, thinking a State IPO and a tax flow worthy of an interstate sap vacuum. After he wound down M put him in the spare bedroom. She says, Toot-Toot Everybody!

Went over 400 taps today. Sunny, nice, gorgeous day to tap. Trees running .25 gpt. No help from Doc RB cause he didn't arise until 3PM. Making my famous Gunpowder Schnitzel - got the recipe from a little old lady in Kitzbuhel - with assorted apple applesauce, parsley potatoes and pickled beets for dinner. Touching it off with a '09 Elk Cove Single Vineyard before dinner and a snappy Bodegas '09 Hito with dinner. Potato bin in the cellar is getting low and the green mountain eyes are budding but so what. Doc reports a Colorado source says APPL's new GTAT million sf plant is a much bigger deal than being reported. Translated for my Vermont friends, that's more than 23 acres under one roof growing sapphire crystals. Think it's going to draw 50,000 megawatts, but that number dwarfs me. And for the record, GTAT is a NH company, which begs the question out to what lunch were our DRED people. That aside, Doc says APPL is going to implant solar cells in the sapphire glass and produce an unbreakable, self-charging iphone, among other things. That's right, you'll be able to run over or drop it in the surf overnight with no performance issues. I can only speculate what APPL's conversation with TSLA was about. Alas, after dinner is Doc Toot-Tooting off to Vermont to check on his mom and I guess make a presentation to the Vermont, Inc. Board Meeting.

How dare you.... The DRED people are the most amazing people they have ever had the pleasure of meeting. At a meeting one time they were so proud to tell us how much they helped local business by being available to answer questions on how to fill out the many forms they require you to fill out for interstate commerce. I asked, wouldn't it be more helpful to just have less forms... long pause... bewilderment then confusion.

Keep up the blog, I love it. Have a great season.

Snow pack thickened and made movement easier. So the tap out nets about .75 gpt. Still got two orchards to go - but all the drops are out of the snowpack - and a clean out boil and a membrane wash/rinse, which I've never done. Might have to track down Miss Je T'aime in K-Bek for a couple of pointers. M did snowshoe up to the sap line crossing over the Tucker track. You can see the bubbles drifting down the line against the sky. She said it was a work of art! And stop PM'ing me for the Gunpowder Schnitzel recipe. Got it in 1971 and I my lips are sealed. You want it, you go over to Kitzbuhel and consort with the granddaughter for a week and see if you end up with the heirloom.

Got down to the sugarhouse to get things organized and found a 150 gallon block of ice in the feed tank. Valve was closed so the site gauge showed it empty. Oh dear. Took all afternoon to fix. I hope none of the pilgrims bothered to pay any attention to whatsoever Doc RB, cause if you did you'll probably go to jail. After ranting at my dinner table while scoffing down two servings of the schnitzel and guzzling my fine wine, GTAT went up 16.7% today. Geez. Go figure: if Doc's got $100k in it he made $16,700 today and with bulk syrup at $30 gal, he made 556 gals - delivered - without even drilling a tree! Can't believe his intuition!! Kinda wonder what Vermont, Inc. is going to say when he gets up there. Bet they're going to think he's a nut and go with the interstate sap vacuum.

Little progress. Feed tank is free but decided to re-clean the flue pan. Beginning to suspect the water frozen in the feed tank was for washing the flue pan but the employees forgot to do it. Naturally the water lines froze before I could finish. Now I don't want to do the start up rinse - with sap - on the RO with the extended forecast, so the membranes are still in their storage tubes. Then when I get to my desk to warm up and work on a couple of vexing issues and taxing problems I get a welfare call from the vet. The border collie, Innsbruck, had been limping so the vet sent over some tramadol. Well, guess I wasn't thinking clearly after climbing up and down to the feed tank and told them ever since I started using the tramadol his limp seems much better. Well they hung up and called M. Now I'm not suppose to feed the dogs without supervision and might even get placed on some animal abuse hot sheet. Like this is an election year. Toot-Toot.

Tapped out in carharrts and gaiters,
Sugary boys all fidgety as idle waiters

While deep snows pile higher and higher
Awaiting Nature’s cherished sweet flyer.

Woodsheds stowed full in neat ranks
Where even the wee wash their big tanks,

And buckets and buckets, and buckets galore,
Hung with Saint Nickolas pray, and then more:

Tubing arrayed in webs snug so tight
By old and young a snowshoe all night,

To the dark hillsides' whine with a sucker's hiss,
Headlamps twinkle and search fittings amiss.

Long they shoe and frozen evenings they toil,
Before lighting the stick wood for a roaring boil

Til old timers doze with rhythmic wheezings
To the hum of new fangled electric squeezings.

Each steam dream hopes tis Felicity they snag,
Even lest risk one scorches a sisterly hag.

Woe, many nary draw a frosted glimpse hoary,
Let alone the sought sweet kiss of their quarry.

For up from the border she so quietly wings,
The brightest light orb she so quickly brings.

Blink, aye, cause only a moment she tarries,
For it must be with all sweet flighty fairies.

And tis due north she so nymphfully scurries
While foolish forecasters still call cold flurries.

So sulks many a brave and hearty stoker forlorn
Fancy's hasty flight to the sound of her mother’s horn.

Nice poem Bruce!

Told M in morning to pick up some of that new Russian sochi everybody's been talking about for dinner tonight. She just rolled her eyes and shook her head like she does with a lot of my ideas, but she likes to try new things. I really think it is just a fad. Up to 31 degrees and got most of the 300 gallons of sap off the driveway and into the feed tank. Surprised at the degradation in the sap over five or six days even though the temperatures didn't get close to 32. And I got the evaporator test fired an cleaned. Just gotta rig up my new pump trailer and I'm ready. M returned without the sochi, said the store was sold out, guess we'll have to wait another week. So we had shrimp pesto with so nice sparkling Cava instead. It's going to be an above average season, the trees are primed, with 22+ more days of good quality sap flow.

WHOA...a lot of negative energy out there in Traderland probably influencing the weather. Let me see, trees had excellent crowns last year with plenty of ground moisture. Good frost penetration and heavy snow pack. Everything tapped and tight. All the stainless is polished. Wood bunks are full. Forecast of all cold nights. My two best years in the last 8: 2008 - 3/4 to 4/9 and 2011 - 3/6 to 4/6 both similar patterns and conditions. Both 17 gpt+. This could easily be record production. Lets practice the deep breathing. Cryptic text from Doc RB: "Nix Vt Inc but JDSU=rupiah=$$$." Guess I'll put a call into my Weathersfield Bow Correspondent; he's real good at this stuff.

My WBC just got back from Tallahassee. Don't ask cause I don't know. He reports many pols and big suits trolling the upscale restaurants and bars with typical trailing retinues. Saw a parked tan Huracan with NY plate FARM BIL. Valet said it belonged to a US Senator with a "sweet chick" and were headed to Savanna after lunch but my man didn't have time to wait around for a visual and got back to Weathersfield to finish the tap out with the boys. Reports Barre RO has not arrived but back of arch is welded. Says he'll work on Doc's message when he has a minute. I put in a call to my bartender friend at the Kamasutra Club to track down Fancy but got shunted into a voicemail so I tootled up to Loudon and got two more cage tanks cause it's gonna be fast and furious.

25 degrees and I was finishing the tap out. I was planning to hang two buckets on a bunch of roadside trees, one with a metal tree saver and the other with a Star Line Thin Walled. The metal taps were barely dripping yet the Thin Walls produced a heavy flow. However, I don't think the Thin Wall will support a bucket since it barely penetrates the drill hole. Very interesting design. Also, I wonder about the longevity of the tap hole since the diameter is so small. We'll see.

M made a couple clear ice martinis and we kicked back after a very successful week. I had lemon peel in mine since I'm no longer allowed to have olives - a long story - while she had a garlic stuffed olive. She had driven by one of my Twist Hill buckets on her way home Friday and now insists that I remove it because it is "out of proportion to its neighbors." See pix. She said I should either use a larger bucket or find a smaller tree. I tried to explain that I used my biggest bucket but she was having none of it and said if that was the case I should have "a larger bucket fabricated. Treat, you're all about misproportion, driving that ratty pickup while living on Snob Hill." I could sense the heading: either down with the bucket or up with a new pick up. So I volunteered to find a smaller tree. Man, the maple business really keeps me on my toes.

That bucket looks lonely on that big tree. I think it needs a couple more to keep it company and look proportionate. Dare I ask about the olive story?

Red Roof, I'm not emotional ready to tell the Vienna/Olive/Thanksgiving story yet, okay? However I did follow up on your advice and tapped in a "companion" bucket this afternoon. I was going to alternate trees every year but maybe two buckets makes more sense. I'll see if M notices on her way home tonight!

M couldn't wait last night to tell me about the PAIR of buckets on Twist Hill! Thanks Red Roof! She said they looked just like Grandpa and Grammy side by side in the yard. (We got a new granddaughter the other weekend.) I was already in a pretty good mood having fired up my H2O. The storage solution is a mild food preservative/antioxidant but I rinsed/washed/rinsed and then sent the rest of the unfrozen sap and the permeate tested 0 sugar. Man do I have a collection of ice scattered about the neighborhood. So the production line is all assembled and test fired, and now we're going to get SUGAR SNOW! The season is starting and I'm right on schedule. Guess I'll see how the market closes in Europe and then mosey on down to the The Maple Guys and watch the Governor drill a tree.

Sap is trying to cut loose. Pumped .8 gpt this afternoon and there were some pretty good streams at the tanks, but a lot of ice. At two of the tanks, pumped 4 inches of sap off the top of the ice. The warmest site had almost no ice. The ma and pa maples ran over. The ratty pickup chugged to pull a cube of sap. Got to see Governor Hassen handle a drill today down to The Maple Guys. She sure ain't a shrinking violet and suspect she might even have some dental school in her past.

As part of my $2M Farm Bill Initiative I introduced myself to the Guv Tuesday at The Maple Guys tap out as M's husband. She asked my name and I explained we had different last names. Last night M reported that the Guv told her she'd met a gentleman who claimed to be her husband! The Guv is very pro local maple and an integral part of my plan. Sweetened the pans and made 8 gal of medium yesterday. A little bit of a learning curve with the filter press...Inventorying more ice in the woods tanks!

While we twiddle away, here's an eye opener: the European Union is self-sufficient in sweetener production. In fact they not only tariff the importation of cane sugar to their members states, they impose a quota system. Where do they get their sweetener? Indigenously produced and refined sugar beets. The EU is third largest economy in the world. The proposed international grading system is tantamount to joining the Quebec Federation to compete on this level; it will not increase the price of bulk syrup in NH. We'll see if Vermont is so foolish as to damage their developed brand and divorce Fancy. I mean, okay, she's high maintenance and likes fast cars but really, cooking sugar beets all August?

Interesting...

Always enjoy reading your threads. Funny and well written.

Surprised to see you got a filter press this year.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Amber Gold

Interesting...

Always enjoy reading your threads. Funny and well written.

Surprised to see you got a filter press this year.

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I always enjoy reading Bruce's posts too. Sometimes I have a hard time figuring out what he is trying to say but it is usually funny.

Surprised are you Amber Gold? Well just imagine dear M the other night when I ascended Snob Hill, my upper torso like a coated pecan with a delectable maple mist from a high pressure filter press leak since Red Roof neglected to give me the right filter aid/syrup ratios in Henniker the other month! And, to be honest, I was guffing a bit. Well, more than a bit. Anyway, now she wants to know what exactly is a filter press and who are the maple traitors. I tried to explain it all had to do with the weather and the moon and they were actually just Maple Traders but she cut me off, saying, "I can see that!" Should be warm enough today to get some sap and clean the cupola windows.

.5 gpt yesterday with only two of the lines actually getting going. Substantial ice in all the tanks, deep ground frost, heavy frozen snow pack, favorable forecast: still will get 24+ days of sap run. Furnace wood will run out this week.

Surprised because I thought last year you wrote the press off as an unnecessary piece of equipment. Just watch...next year you'll have a sucker to go with your squeezers.

I hope you didn't let the maple mist coating go to waste...sacrilege.

Naw, might have but don't remember. But none of the stuff is unnecessary equipment. Rather RO's, vacuums, filter presses all have an economy of scale. Break point for a filter press is probably a hundred to two hundred gallons of syrup a season. But the wonderful part of maple is anybody can make good syrup in their driveway with minimal equipment and expense. And there are all sorts of posts of sugar makers problem solving terrific solutions, developing impressive skill sets and making good syrup.

So M picks out this cute house and we buy it without carefully checking out the neighborhood. Geez it ends up being in an area locally known as Snob Hill. Like, never trust those real estate people. And I guess I understand, the neighbors have things like "infinity" type pools and one 747 guy runs over the edge year round. Now I've seen these pools through the bird glasses and by climbing trees, but after 15 years I've yet to be able to stick a toe in one. M comes back all the time from long jogs with wet hair, she says it's just from running up the hill, but I have my doubts. I guess it's all about hanging out on your floatie until you're convinced the world is flat and the very next breeze will send you off the edge and it is quite the panic...right, Dr. Strangelove? (He's a couple doors over, right after the Ambassador, and I don't think he reads the Trader.) Well after further investigating, I discovered infinity type pools cost more than our house so I decided to build an infinity type patio and borrowed an excavator from a dirt trader to harvest all the spare rocks scattered about my lawn. Messy but hey, just trying to fit in and I'm going to invite the neighbors over to libate on my infinity patio and enjoy the end of the world absolutely without any reciprocal expectations.

looks like you got an early start on your garden too

Little doubt here that the maple season will collide with the asparagus season. Walked the lines yesterday on top of the snow pack. Only the south sides were dripping. Two inches of new snow this morning. First run starts today. No excuses, everyone oughta be ready by now!

Pumped .5 gpt but only warmer lines had good streams and south side buckets. Nice 2.5% sugar. Can't believe the snowpack!

Collected about .4gpt last night. Once again, only the warmer three orchards produced anything. Counting the ice, 3 gpt so far with an annual average od 13.2 gpt. No mud here yet, instead have to sand the considerable ice. Should get another .5gpt today.

Got .75 gpt of 3% from the buckets, .4 gpt of 2.4% from the lines pumping at 7PM. Pretty good streams from the warm orchards but the flow didn't start until 2PM and ran right through the high winds. No tree wells in the woods yet. Had to use an ice chisel to pump two of the tanks. The sap gets trapped between three layers of ice. Getting better with the filter press now that I understand the concept of a bypass valve.

Got .6 gpt today, about 400 gal, more than expected but light flows. Gathered a little too late and the temps slid too fast and couldn't get it all into the sugarhouse before the lines froze. Just more ice into the inventory.

Took 2 days for the overhead feed line to unfreeze and 2 hours to thaw out the sugarhouse and finish Sunday's sap. Floor drain frozen on March 25th? Over 40 gals of nice syrup but the weather is still too cold to start the trees. No tree wells. Dense snowpack. Big ice in the streams. Any rain will probably run off on top.

Tough weather. Got .25 gpt yesterday and .40 gpt today of 2.8%. Ice in all the tanks. Heavy snowpack.